


lost in nostalgia

by falloutmars



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Canon levels of violence, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Introspection, Minor Character Death, Nostalgia, Time Travel, alternative universe, it's in the past but also not, like you don't See any of it but it is spoken about
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:20:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27511432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falloutmars/pseuds/falloutmars
Summary: “Is this gonna work?”Staring at the machine in front of them, it blinks a red light at her. “I have no idea.”Jughead grabs her hand, tangling their hands together in an attempt to calm his nerves. “What if it goes wrong?”“I don’t know,” Betty tells him honestly. “I’ve never used a time machine before.”–or, Betty and Jughead find a time machine and use it to fix their pasts.
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 18
Kudos: 28
Collections: 8th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees





	lost in nostalgia

**Author's Note:**

> hi! this is not something i'd usually write so i've hope i've done it justice? a bit of a different one but enjoy!
> 
> [book cover!](https://fallout-mars.tumblr.com/post/634516381516349440/lost-in-nostalgia-read-on-ao3-pairing-betty)

“Is this gonna work?”

Staring at the machine in front of them, it blinks a red light at her. “I have no idea.”

Jughead grabs her hand, tangling their hands together in an attempt to calm his nerves. “What if it goes wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Betty tells him honestly. “I’ve never used a time machine before.”

The machine in question is big, probably at least 8 feet tall. It’s essentially a huge metal box with a strange looking screen and flashing lights. Not what you would expect a time machine to look like. If, uh, if that’s something you’ve ever thought about. 

He chuckles lightly despite the rising anxiety in his throat. “Me neither.”

She turns to him. “We have to do this, right?”

“Are you sure?”

Swallowing thickly, he nods. “I want to change the past.”

“Me too,” she agrees. And after a pause, “...how?”

They both laugh. “Good question.”

“I guess we just…” She gestures vaguely at the LED screen and array of buttons centered in the middle at the back of the cube of metal. “...press a few and hope for the best.”

“And when we get there?”

She hums as she thinks, eyes moving to stare straight ahead at what’s in front of her. “We stop him.”

 _We stop him_. That’s, uh, a plan if he’s ever heard one. Maybe his nerves would be more under control if they did have a plan, but as two people who have never done this before, that sounds easier said than done.

She’s the one to initiate moving into the machine, tugging him with her until they’re standing underneath the red lights, door shut behind them. “So if we–” she taps the screen “–oh! Okay, so it looks like we put in a date here...”

He tries to focus on the screen, on her voice, on anything other than the fact they’re doing something that could potentially be dangerous. And could fuck up time and space for the rest of their lives. Yeah. Hm. 

“Jug? Jug? Jughead?”

Blinking rapidly, he manages to refocus himself. “Yes, yeah, sorry.”

She sighs, looking over at him and bringing her hand up to cup his face. “Hey,” she says softly. “We don’t have to do this, okay?”

As easy as it’d be to say _‘okay let’s go’_ , he knows they can’t. What happened back then… it needs to be changed. And finding this time machine, they can do that. Current Betty and Jughead with the knowledge they have can change what happened. 

“No,” he says with more conviction than he feels. “No, we have to.”

She smiles, leaning forward to press a chaste, almost life-affirming kiss against his lips. “Let’s do it.”

Watching as she presses a few more buttons until the correct date—over four years ago—is displayed on the screen, he clings onto her hand. He squeezes it tighter and tighter with every one she presses as he tries to hold onto that small chance that this will _work >_. Practically stumbling into a time machine is one thing, but two inexperienced people trying to use it is another. Using it and it going right is a completely different ball game.

 _It’s worth a shot_ , he tries to tell himself. _It’s worth a sho_.

The screen flashes with a neon green _‘ready?’_ sign. 

Betty turns to him again. “You sure?”

“Yes,” he tells her and he believes it.

“We’ll do it together.” She takes their intertwined hands and hovers over the accept button. She hesitates, breathing out a short stream of air. “Is this stupid?”

He can’t help but laugh. “Is it stupid? Yes. Could it also stop a rampant serial killer from killing both of our entire families? Also yes.”

“Well if you put it like that…” She trails off, hesitating no more as she moves their hands to hit the accept button. 

At first, nothing happens. The screen stays the same, the light above them continues its strange blinking pattern as if it’s talking to them in morse code, and they stay still. No dramatic moving or tumbling around. It’s not like it is in the movies at all. 

That confuses the pair of them. 

Meeting Betty’s eyes, Jughead screws his face up in confusion. “Uh, Betts? I don’t think it’s working.”

She glances around as if she’s expecting a delayed reaction or something. But again, nothing. “Do we… leave?”

He doesn’t get the chance to reply because the light above them stops flashing, instead shining a red beam directly at them both. Their eyes dart upwards, snapping shut once they realize that the stupid thing here might be two fully grown adults looking straight into what might as well be a laser.

She laughs once she slowly opens her eyes again, pleasantly surprised when she can actually still _see_. “We’re so dumb.”

“I can’t disagree with that.”

“How long do we wait?”

Spluttering, he sends her a look. “Wait? We’re waiting?”

She nods, narrowing her eyes. “Of course. We’ve got this far, haven’t we?”

The Time Machine Gods must hear them and hear his doubt because the light above them changes from red to green and it begins making a high pitched squealing noise. The screen flashes up with a new message. It’s a date, yesterday’s actually. And with every second, it descends through the dates. 

“Jug?”

He hums as he stares at the screen, gripping her hand with everything he’s got. 

She lets out a breathy laugh. “Jug, relax.” “Relax?” he questions in disbelief. “Betty we’re in a time machine! What if we _die?”_

She chuckles again. “Firstly, if we die we die together. Secondly, we’re not going to die.”

Despite his gut feeling, he laughs too. “I think that should’ve been the other way around.”

She ignores him. “And thirdly, this is gonna take ages, so we might as well try to make a proper plan.”

In the movies and in both of their dreams, time travel happens quickly. There’s none of this waiting around, watching as the dates tick back. And there isn’t even any space for them to walk around. From the outside, it’s about the size of the TARDIS, or a general phone box, but unlike the TARDIS, it is not bigger on the inside. 

So they’re just standing side by side, hand in hand, unable to really move and wondering exactly how long this will take.

“You’re right,” Jughead says after a moment. A moment or nine days in the past. 

“So…” She extends the syllable, swaying slightly. She sighs. “Jug, I have no ideas.”

“Let’s start with the basics,” he says calmly, a lot calmer than he actually feels. “Number one rule of time travel is–”

She interrupts him. “Don’t let your past self see you. And don’t see your past self”

He laughs. “Yeah. Sounds easy, right?”

“And don’t waste time.”

“I haven’t heard that one before,” he tries to joke but it falls flat. He can sense Betty’s nerves now. His own have subsided albeit only slightly, now he can tell she’s having doubts. 

She sighs again. “What are we doing?”

“Stopping your dad?” he questions quietly. 

Nodding, she looks down at her feet. “What he did, Jug–”

“No,” he stops her. “No, don’t go there.” _Don’t go there because I don’t want to relive it. Don’t go there because, despite the fact he isn’t even my father, I can’t bear the thought. Don’t go there because it’ll destroy both of us_.

She stays quiet then. She’s quiet as she stares at her shoes, still clutching onto his hand like she never wants to let go, like it’s the only thing keeping her feet on the ground.

“I’m sorry,” he offers. “Let’s… let’s get back to it.”

Looking up at him, her lips lift up into a smile. “Rules. And gameplan.”

Over the next twenty minutes, they come up with somewhat of a plan. First, they need to work out how to get from the location of the time machine— _somewhere_ in Fox Forest—back to the heart of Riverdale. If it works how they hope—unlikely at this point, but possible—they’ll arrive on the specific date at midnight, giving them six or so hours to try and prevent the first murder. The first one being Betty’s mom, Alice, in their family home. 

“How are we gonna do that?” she asks, nibbling her bottom lip.

He brings his hand up to her face, moving his thumb against her lip so she stops biting it. “We need to get your dad out of the house. Or my dad.”

She nods. “He can’t catch them.”

Swallowing thickly, a potentially stupid idea comes into his head. “How about he… catch us instead?”

She avoids his gaze for a moment as she thinks. “That–” she pauses, sighing “– _could_ work. If we avoid my room.”

Could. Everything is a _could_. Nothing certain, everything is at stake here. They’re amateur at best in this situation, so every move they make is potentially leading to a recipe for disaster. There’s one thing changing your traumatic past, there’s another fucking up your entire future too. 

It’d be easy, really, to get to 2018 and just come back again. Come back to a year where life has finally quietened down, they’re starting to be happy, things are as normal as can be. But at the same time, there’s something wrong, something missing. There’s always the thought of _‘what if he didn’t catch them?’_ or _‘what if we did this differently?’_ and it’s never something they thought they’d get to experience, or get to change. 

But the opportunity arose, whether they like it or not. And it’s now not a _what if_ , it’s a _let’s see_. They have to do it, they have to see. After years spent wondering, they have to at least try.

Despite the very real possibility of completely messing up time, they _have_ to.

So it’s what they’ll do. Even if it’s stupid, idiotic, ridiculous. Especially if it’s all of those things.

Once they finish discussing their plan in as much detail as possible—which, arguably, isn’t very much detail at all—that’s when the real nerves set in. If Jughead thought he was nervous before, he did not know what he’d be in for now.

They’re in the right year now, looming closer and closer to the right date, preparing to face what they’d thought they’d left behind. 

“It’s for the better,” he says out loud. To himself, to her, as a way of comfort. 

“Yeah,” she agrees with far less conviction than before. “Yeah.”

As the dates flick backward, both of their eyes are fixated on the screen, watching time go back to the past. It slows the closer they get, the light above them turning from green to yellow now. 

Eyes wide, he watches as it flips over onto the right date. He’d been expecting a noise, signally their arrival, but there’s nothing. Instead, everything goes quiet, bathed in yellow light. 

“We’re here?” 

She nods, brows furrowed. “I guess.”

There’s a click as the door opens itself, yellow flooding outside into the darkness of the forest.

He steps outside, hand still gripping onto hers. “Thank god it’s the night,” he says with a small chuckle. They got one thing right at least.

“Jug.”

Spinning around, his eyes meet hers, filled with worry.

She takes a deep breath. “You know I love you, right?

He smiles. “And I love you too.”

Bringing her spare up to cup his cheek, she leans forward and presses her lips against his. It’s a soft kiss, soft but real. Because that’s what she needs at the moment, something to make her feel alive. Alive as she can feel when she’s four years older than the time allows. 

When she pulls back, she squeezes his hand. “Let’s do this.”

–

They go to Pop’s first. It’s the middle of the night after all and is there really anywhere else to go at this time?

On the short walk there, Betty begins to relax slightly. Jughead, on the other hand, is freaking out about his appearance.

“Betty, have I changed a lot in four years?”

She can’t help but laugh. “I mean, yeah.” She pokes him in the cheek. “You lost that beanie for a start.”

“Oh fuck,” he mutters, running his hand through his hatless hair. “I should’ve brought that.”

“Ah, now that’s where I’m one step ahead of you.” She stops in her tracks, dropping her bag off of her shoulder and tugging something out. “Ta-da!”

It is, of course, his age-old beanie. The only problem is that it _looks_ its age. There are pieces of wool sticking out in all directions, a snag in the upturned rim, and the red button nine-year-old Betty sewed on after he ripped it playing Kings and Queens with her and Archie has fallen off. 

From a distance, though, it might look okay. 

_Might._

But it’s possible that Pop, the ever-observant, will notice.

He tugs it on anyway, smiling at the familiar feeling. “Thanks.”

Blinking rapidly, tears form in her eyes. “Wow,” she says, breathless. “You look…”

“Like a weirdo?” he finishes for her, his smile turning into a full-blown grin.

She shakes her head. “Younger. Like the boy I fell in love with all those years back.” She lets out a gentle laugh and shrugs. “I know we’re _literally_ four years in the past, but that beanie does better than any time machine.”

That, he can understand. For him, putting the beanie on feels strange. And it does feel like he’s been thrown back into his teenage self. The self he hated, the one who was an outsider with no real friends outside of Betty and Archie, the one who was bullied and taunted for being the son of a Serpent. The one who fell in love with Betty Cooper, the one who Betty Cooper fell in love with _despite_ all of his flaws.

He looks at her now. She looks older in a way, more mature, but she’s still the person he loved back then. Or… back _now_. Not that, he realizes, it makes any sense. 

Time travel is weird. 

He’s 21 years old in a shard of time he lived in as a 17-year-old trying to fix his past. He’s wearing a beanie he grew up wearing and only managed to part with—pushed to the back of his underwear drawer—a few months ago that makes him feel the way he did at 17 more than any time travel ever could.

He’s changed. He’s changed but he’s exactly the same. He’s changed and Betty’s changed, but their love, that’s what’s stayed the same, that’s what’s kept them somewhat similar to back here. 

As his eyes move across her face, he can’t help but smile. Things have changed, times have changed, but the way he smiles every time he looks at her has stayed exactly the same. It’s weathered the storm. _They’ve_ weathered the storm, one that they only could’ve done together. 

So maybe it doesn’t matter if it’s 2018, 2022, or any other year. Maybe it doesn’t matter that they’re about to face the single biggest thing either of them has ever faced. Or maybe it does. 

But what matters the most is that they’re together. Despite everything, they stuck together. And together is the only way forward, no matter the year.

Right now, though, the way forward is to go backward. Backward in time, but still together. 

When the diner comes into view, the neon red of the sign lighting up their way, Jughead turns to Betty and bumps their shoulders together.

“What was that for?” she asks with a giggle. 

“Are you gonna put your hair up?”

She looks at him contemplatively, her hand subconsciously running through her hair free from its usual—for this time—ponytail. “Maybe I should,” she eventually replies.

She does. Before they get any closer to the diner, they pause so she can do it. He watches her, studying her various facial expressions (there are _a lot_ ). It’s something he did before they were together, just study her. Something he told himself was purely platonic. (Spoiler alert: it was not.) 

Eventually, once they got their shit together and started dating, he only became more entranced with her. Now, as in the year they’re from, it’s no different.

Seeing her put her hair into a ponytail makes him feel things, though. And for her, it’s a move that’s so ingrained into her memory she barely has to think about it. She just does it and she feels 17 again. 

“I don’t know how you pull that off.”

She shrugs, fiddling with the end of it. “Feels weird.”

He pulls her forward into a searing kiss. “I _like_ it.”

Somehow, he still manages to make her blush, ducking her head until she’s hiding her face against his shoulder. “We should go,” she mumbles. 

“C’mon.”

–

Inside the diner, they sit in the booth they’ve always sat in. Ever since they were old enough to go out by themselves, the booth in the far corner belonged to them and their friends. As time went on, things around them started to change. They started to grow up, grow apart in some cases, but the booth they occupied never changed. 

Pop is happy, if not surprised, to see them. He greets them with a smile, glancing between the pair of them, his eyes inevitably falling on their intertwined hands, resting atop the table.

Thinking back to 2018, Betty remembers that their relationship was relatively lowkey compared to currently, compared to how 2022 Betty is acting. She may have jumped back in time—literally and metaphorically through a simple change of her hairstyle—but she just… forgot. She forgot how shy they used to be around one another, none of this PDA they’re currently showing. Hence Pop’s confusion, no doubt. 

Betty thinks about removing her hand from Jughead’s, but she decides the sudden change of mind might seem more suspicious than this. It’ll be something to discuss with Jughead when Pop leaves them be, though. 

After taking their orders—two milkshakes and a side of fries for Jughead—he lingers for a moment. No one else is in the diner, and it feels like he wants to ask them something while they’re alone. Luckily for them, the moment passes and he wanders off. 

She looks at Jughead. “Do you think he knows?”

He shakes his head without hesitation. “How could he?”

She points to their hands. “Everyone knows about the Cooper/Jones feud.”

“And everyone knows about the Romeo-and-Juliet-esque romance between the two teens.”

He’s right. Their romance is common knowledge around town, even if it is a shy one. They fought all odds to be together, everyone knows that too. 

With a sigh, Jughead tugs her hand towards him. “It’s okay,” he reassures quietly. “We’ll go through it all, okay?”

She nods, glancing over at the red Coca-Cola clock on the wall. 12:30, it displays. Half-past midnight. She stifles a yawn. “Going back in time is exhausting.”

He sends her a sympathetic smile. “We’ll be back soon.”

 _Back where?_ she wants to ask. Back at home four years in the future, she hopes. Is that how time travel works?

She begins to spiral inside her own head.

What if they can’t go back to where they came from? How do they know their actions now will change the time they live in? What if stopping him doesn’t stop it in their pasts? Every action matters, right? So what if changing the past only serves to make the present worse? What if they had to go through that shit to become the people they are today? The people they are in 2o22? 

What if their pasts made them who they are? Both together and individually. 

What if that was what brought them closer together? What if they need the bad times to make them realize how good the good times really are?

Everything is important. Everything happens for a reason. Betty believes that. 

What _are_ they doing?

Pop interrupts her thoughts before Jughead catches on. “Here you are,” he says, sliding the two milkshakes and fries onto the table. “Fancied a change tonight, Betty?”

She blinks rapidly, trying to work out what he’s referring to. In front of her sits a chocolate milkshake, and another in front of Jughead. That must be it. Over the years, she moved on from vanilla, preferring chocolate. It’s a simple change she’d never thought about, perhaps one more important than she once realized. 

Looking up at Pop, she smiles. “Sometimes midnight chocolate is what you need.”

That seems to be an acceptable answer as he sends her a smile back. “I’ll leave you to it.”

Before her brain (or Jughead) can catch up, she calls out for him. “Pop! Wait, can I ask you something?”

He looks at her, waiting. 

Betty has always liked Pop, back then and now. He’s always been kind and generous and every other positive adjective she can think of. Out of any outsiders, he understood the Cooper/Jones feud better than anyone. He’d known both parties for a long time, so he knew of the complexities namely between Hal, Alice, and FP. 

When Betty and Jughead became friends at such a young age, everyone was shocked. The two families—Alice, Hal, and Betty and FP and Jughead—met at the diner one afternoon once the two kids reached their teenage years. Apparently, at 13, they were old enough to understand. Understand being the three parents yelling at once another in front of a thankfully mostly empty diner, but most importantly, Pop. The very person who stepped in and managed to diffuse the situation enough that he could calmly convince them that he’d always keep an eye on Betty and Jughead.

In other words, he managed to convince their parents that it’d be the sensible (and adult) option to allow them to stay friends despite their differences as families. 

So he’s the reason they’re here today. Here in 2018 and here in 2022.

...He just doesn’t know the second one yet. 

_Weird_. 

“How did you do it?” she asks. “How did you convince our parents all those years back?”

It’s funny, to be honest, to mention their parents when in the time they’re from, their parents are all dead. Well, except for Gladys, Jughead’s mom, who has been MIA for as long as he can remember. 

Alice: Caught by her husband in a compromising position with FP in the Cooper family home a mere seven hours from now. Murdered by her husband using a fireplace tool as a weapon. 

FP: Managed to escape from the Cooper house before Hal got to him only to be found two hours later as he hid in the Whyte Wyrm. Shot by Hal.

Hal: The murderer himself, his wife was not his first kill. Sinners were who he went after until his reign ended a day after his final kill, FP, when his life was ended by the town’s Sheriff. 

Pop’s chuckle brings her back to Earth. “I had my ways, dear.”

“Did we ever thank you for that?” Jughead asks.

“Seeing you two together forever will do just that,” he says as he walks off.

Together forever. Betty likes the sound of that. Her and Jughead against the world. A smile forms on her face, one she can’t seem to get rid of despite the ridiculousness of what they’re doing.

“Betty,” Jughead urges in a loud whisper. “Betty!”

She hums, slowly looking up at him.

“Betty I think he knows.” 

Her eyes snap to his. “Wait, _what?”_

He nods, seemingly about as panicked as she is. “That comment.”

That comment? “Together forever?” she questions.

“Yes!”

“I…” She pauses, thinking. “I guess I thought it was weird.” Nice, but weird. 

“What do we do?”

Good question. On the one hand, it could be dangerous, it could be really dangerous. She’s no time-traveling expert (unfortunately) but being found out sounds _bad_. Being a known time traveler… surely there are places in a deep basement underneath the Whitehouse to test on those kinds of people. 

But on the flip side, it’s _Pop_. It’s the man both of them have known for almost as long as their parents. He’s acted as a father figure to them since their real fathers died—not that he knows that yet—and has always been there for them in a way no one else has. Case in point: convincing their parents. So would he _really_ expose them? She’d hope not.

She shrugs, deciding it’s not worth worrying about. “Hope for the best.”

“O-kay,” he says with a chuckle. “Let’s enjoy this meal while we can.”

And it’s a good meal, if fries and milkshakes count as a meal. Pop’s milkshake is always good, no matter the time and no matter the year. 

It’s difficult, though, trying to plan to stop a series of murders that haven’t happened yet, especially when there’s someone else in the room who may think you’re mad if they overhear you. 

Time travel, Jughead thinks, is mad. 

Their plan is also quote-unquote _mad_. If timed right, Hal can catch them instead of FP and Alice. Who knows what could happen if he catches them, though? That’s not something they really speak about. If Hal was willing to murder his own wife, who’s to say he wouldn’t his own daughter too? 

The thought terrifies Jughead. He can’t fathom losing Betty, past, present, or future. Hell, Hal could kill him instead but it wouldn’t hurt half as much as losing Betty. Though he wouldn’t wish that pain on _her_ , so it’s best neither of them gets killed.

Through a mouthful of fries, he mumbles, “Betts, I don’t think this is gonna work.”

Her eyebrows shoot up. “Have you got a better idea?” Her voice is slightly harsh, perhaps harsher than she means, but she puts it down to circumstance.

Luckily, he lets out a breathy laugh. “No, but…” He sighs, grabbing her hand. “What if he hurts you instead?”

“He won’t.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Swallowing thickly, she fights the urge to snatch her hand away. Her own father wouldn’t do that to her. Would he? 

As if he could read her mind, Jughead continues. “He’s your father, Betty, I get it. It’s just, he–” he lowers his voice to a whisper “– _killed_ his wife. Hell, Clifford Blossom shot his son in the forehead. In Riverdale, no one is safe.” _In Riverdale, no one is safe._

Maybe Jughead is right. She thought it herself, but quickly dismissed it, the feeling that their past cannot be changed, no matter what. Hearing it from him, though, maybe he has a point.

She doesn’t let go of his hand. Instead, she pulls him closer, cradling it by her head. “I’m sorry.”

He nods. He’s not sure what she’s sorry for, but if apologizing makes her feel better, he’ll take it. 

“You’re right,” she says after she presses a gentle kiss to the palm of his hand. 

“There’s a first for everything,” he tries to joke. Ultimately, it falls flat, but the intent was there. 

Closing her eyes, she allows tears to build up. “What are we doing?” she whispers just loud enough for him to hear.

“We’ll go back.”

She opens her eyes to a blurred image. She can’t bring herself to care. “We can’t.”

He nods. “Yes, we can.”

In theory, they can. In theory, all they have to do is find the time machine again and input the date they left and wait out the twenty-odd minutes it took and arrive back in the right year. Then, they can wander back to the Five Seasons where they’re staying for the night and attend their best friends’ wedding tomorrow like nothing ever happened. They can leave in two days and never come back here because that’d be easiest. The only reason they’re here is for the wedding, so getting tangled up in this doesn’t have to happen. They can just… _forget_ about it.

In theory. 

Perhaps it’s more of a question of _will they?_

Betty slurps down the rest of her milkshake. “I’m so… I don’t know, _confused_. We’re literally four years in the past, here to face the single event that ruined our lives. We have the ability to change it, Jug, so why am I hesitating? We can prevent murders. If we choose not to, surely that makes us bad people.”

Her voice is louder than he’d like, acutely aware of the presence of Pop just a few feet away, but he can understand why. 

“I don’t know,’ he answers after a moment. “I don’t– I don’t think–” He sighs at his inability to get the words out. “Some people are just like that, you know? Some people are destined to be murderers from the day they’re born. So… no, I guess I don’t think that’d make us bad people because I think it would’ve happened anyway.”

The look on Betty’s face breaks his heart. She’s frowning, her bottom lip poked out, trembling, and tears are running down her face. It hits her hard because this is the reality of _her father_ , her own flesh and blood. She’d spent years wondering if she’d turn out the same, if she had the same genes or upbringing or whatever it is that caused him to be that way in her, if she was her father’s daughter. She’d thought, she’d convinced herself, that stopping him from killing her family would stop that feeling too. 

In the midst of the chaos, she’d managed to forget that her mom wasn’t his first kill. And the likeliness is if the sheriff hadn’t shot him dead the following day, FP wouldn’t have been his last.

She looks up at Jughead. “Yeah. I think you’re right.” She manages to muster up a tiny smile. “Again.”

He smiles back, mostly because it’s all he can think of doing right now. 

Wiping the tears from her face, she lets her shoulders relax as she grips onto his hand. “What now?”

He shrugs. “Order another milkshake?”

They do exactly that. With the diner still empty, they order their 2018 usuals. Jughead’s is chocolate, like it is now, and Betty’s is vanilla. A slice of nostalgia for both of them.

Pop seems happy with their orders, beaming at them as he brings them to the table. “Like old times,” he says with a knowing look. He’s always known everything. 

Taking a sip of vanilla milkshake for the first time in three years is more than just a slice of nostalgia. She’s sitting in a booth in a diner she thought she’d left behind, with her hair in a ponytail she hasn’t worn in years, the sickly sweet flavor of vanilla running over her tongue in a way that’s more comforting than the memories associated with it. 

And then there’s Jughead. His outfits haven’t changed much in four years, but the addition of the beanie that used to act as his comfort blanket makes him look younger than his years. To him, putting it on immediately made him feel flooded by the past. To Betty, she’s only reminded of the man she fell in love with. 

Everything together… the diner, the ponytail, the beanie, the milkshakes. This _was_ them. As much as it’s not them anymore, as much as they think they’ve moved on from this time, it lives within them. Being back—regardless of the reason—is hard. It makes them realize that their past might not control them anymore, but that it still exists. And it always will.

Maybe that’s not all bad.

Because without it, some things might never have happened. 

_~fin_

**Author's Note:**

> please let me know what you think of this! i really appreciate your comments and would love to know what you think of this different piece.
> 
> thank you for reading <3
> 
> come [tumblr](https://fallout-mars.tumblr.com/) with me


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